‘Peak Trans’ Turned Her Rightward

A reader sent an extraordinary e-mail, and gave me permission to post it as long as I didn’t identify her. She signed her real name, and I can confirm that she is who she says she is in this letter:

Your recent post about leftists being pushed right by transgender activism and gender identity politics was laughed at by a lot of commenters who think a hyper-liberal woman is unlikely to turn conservative. Well, the joke is on them, because I am one and I am far, far from alone.

I was as far left as you can get without being a full-on Marxist. I thought prostitution was empowering, polyamory was fine, witchcraft was a positive spirituality, and that men who identify as transgender were my sisters. I voted Greens and Democrats all the way.

Transgender activism is usually what tips us over to the right. I faced persistent, public, sexually graphic harassment for not being a good enough trans ally, and that didn’t tip me over the edge. Which is really crazy, but that after long public discussions about the imagined deformities of my genitalia, and ridiculous libel aimed at ruining my career by the transgender community, I still supported them.

The tipping point is referred to as hitting “peak trans.” Usually this involves an illogical or dangerous statement you simply can’t force yourself to accept. For me, it was that we could no longer say “women’s health.” Because “men have uteruses.”

Now changing the terminology, which is very useful, does not mean you wouldn’t have to disclose to your doctor that you are on hormones, puberty blockers, or had reassignment surgery. Just like you have to disclose asthma, allergies, or heart conditions. It provides no useful function beyond enabling the delusion of less than 1% of the population that believe, despite all scientic evidence, that they can change their biological sex.

I started to see the tail wagging the dog, often violently. I began to research the issue quietly. I learned about the dangers of children transitioning and the very real difficulties they face as adults. The numbers of inmates, especially those convicted of violent sexual crimes, transitioning and being allowed to move to women’s prisons is alarming. Friends who had also hit peak trans were speaking up and receiving death threats against their families. Not just threats against themselves, but threats aimed specifically at their children.

Remember the flourishing of feminist bookstores in the 90’s? Those are gone. Remember Women’s Studies? It is now Gender Studies and lipstick-wearing men are leading feminist organizations. Lesbian and feminist events are being shut down by transgender activists. Last year a workshop on “The Disappearing Lesbian” was shut down because pointing out that transgender activists are silencing lesbians is transphobic.

The children are the worst part. I was one of the people applauding Jazz for being an openly transgender kid when the tv show launched. Now I am horrified that this young man will never experience puberty, is flooded with artificial hormones, and is going to have immature genitalia for the rest of his life. Studies show that gender dysphoria in children and teens goes away as they mature. No studies show that transitioning improves mental health. Parents are losing their parental rights because medical professionals are grooming their children to become transgender if they show any traits that do not for the gender stereotype of their sex (boys playing with dolls, or girls preferring trucks).

Women like Shannon Thrace discuss the heartbreak of a husband’s transition, how they lose their spouses for narcissists aping some degrading stereotype of womanhood. Women, both liberal and conservative, have fought to be heard and treated with respect. To see men talk about how they are better than women simply because they wear heels and lipstick, and have a perverse need to be desired as a sex object, is so degrading. These men believe that a proper women is as aesthetically flawless, smiling, and submissive as a Playboy bunny, and in aiming for that ideal men and women will find them irresistibly desirable. The fact that most people do not find them attractive, especially straight males and lesbians, makes them angry. They feel they are owed your lust, and if you are not interested you are a bigot. So much for consent culture!

Women who care about the safety and well-being of women and children are discovering the left no longer cares about them. When they try to find a place where their values are respected, they are often surprised to find it among conservatives. More than surpised. Shocked.

My friends and I went from sharing articles by Olbermann and Maddow to following Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Our female role models became academics like Dr. Deborah Savage who actually acknowledge biological reality in their examination of gender.

Some of us are loud and proud in our views, risking threats. Others are quiet, fearful of losing our jobs if we make a comment online, which we never feared as liberals. I’m one of the quiet ones. As much harassment as I received from the transgender community as an ally, I simply don’t have the strength to deal with it as a critic and risk being doxxed.

But it isn’t just politics. We used to hang out with Reiki masters, witches, shamans, and a miscellany of hippies who advocate nudity, polyamory, moral relavitism, and postmodern deconstruction of everything. Now we go to Mass. We pray the rosary. Our lives are changing for the better as we re-examine our beliefs and find community that shares our values.

Just like you, Rod, we get messages from friends who are realizing the left does not have their best interests in mind, but don’t want to be ostracized and harassed by making any public comments. There is a sort of social media Underground Railroad supporting women moving from left to right, giving them both the information and privacy they need to process such a significant change.

I’m not merely an “anecdote.” I’m real. And you can publish this as long as you leave my name off of it. I need my job and I don’t deserve to be eaten alive by liberals who only value women who are conforming to their ideology.

Thank you, reader! And may God give you strength and community. It will be a good day when women like this no longer have to live in fear of these bullies. In the meantime, though, I hope readers like her can take comfort in knowing: you are not alone.

It’s interesting to me that this reader was pushed into Catholic Christianity by all this, from paganism. I would like to know more about this (and reader, if you’d like to explain it, of course I will protect your identity). Could it be that she realized that within paganism (and liberal Christianity, and within American liberal culture more generally), there are insufficient resources to push back against the trans insanity? That’s just my guess, but it makes sense to me. If you have built a spirituality and a cultural politics around the absolute sovereignty of the Self, then how do you say no, we will not cross this line? What, exactly, is there to keep you from stepping off into the abyss?

(I invite my pagan friend Franklin Evans to weigh in on this question from his pagan perspective!)

I’m in transit now to Budapest, but I look forward to watching Shannon Thrace’s speech at TEDx in the Netherlands. See it below. From what I could gather about it in the short time I had before boarding the plane, she is a left-wing feminist who believes (correctly, I think) that transgenderism is a manifestation of capitalism unbound. I could be wrong about this; I’ll check out her talk when I can. One thing I saw on her blog: she was so grateful that she could give this talk in the Netherlands, where she doesn’t have to fear assault by transgender activists. To the very great shame of the United States!

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116 Responses to ‘Peak Trans’ Turned Her Rightward

“Now I am horrified that this young man will never experience puberty, is flooded with artificial hormones, and is going to have immature genitalia for the rest of his life.”

Keep in mind that therapy sessions with a psychologist, and prayer, are considered great evils if the direction is resisting things like homosexual desires. However, pumping young kids full of chemicals that permanently change them is just fine. Okayyy!

“a left-wing feminist who believes (correctly, I think) that transgenderism is a manifestation of capitalism unbound.”

She is correct. Having sold the disease, they are more than happy to sell the ‘cure’ and then sell years of therapy when that cure doesn’t have the desired results. And sell a million lawsuits against anyone who gets in the way. It’s capitalism untethered, and unrestrained.

A Steve Sailer observation I’ve seen him make about later-in-life male-to-female transgender folks is that they are quite often married to women, have a number of children, and work in very “male” occupations (the military, upper management, sportswriting, etc.) and that following transition they combine the hard-charging dominant personalities they had before with hysterical political activism.

Remember the flourishing of feminist bookstores in the 90’s? Those are gone. Remember Women’s Studies? It is now Gender Studies and lipstick-wearing men are leading feminist organizations.

The highest paid female CEO in the US in 2013, according to the media, was Martine Rothblatt, who’s MTF. The Wachowskis, both transgendered MTF women, were around the same time named the highest-grossing female directors in history (though one of them wasn’t identifying as a woman yet– so I guess, around that point, just one of them was).

The tipping point is referred to as hitting “peak trans.” Usually this involves an illogical or dangerous statement you simply can’t force yourself to accept.

There’s something sort of like this if you’re gay. Sooner or later you come across an article on a gay website saying “Only a bigot won’t let strangers come inside him” or you find a porn site that includes guys with biohazard tattoos on their bodies “converting” somebody.

There is really horrible, horrible stuff out there. Have you read Blood Meridian? There is something like that, something that visceral (in all senses of the word) happening in our own culture, our own towns and cities, today, tonight.

[NFR: I’ve never read that. I want to let readers who are unaware know that reader Matt in VA is gay. So don’t call him a “homophobe” because you don’t like his opinions. — RD]

Maybe this stuff really is too crazy to last. There are times when I really worry about the direction the country is going now that the news media can’t say what men and women are anymore. I wonder, “Is everyone else really insane? Am I the last person who is not crazy?” Then I read this and am reassured that no, I am not the last sane person, most are probably just playing along out of fear.

Also, I couldn’t resist:

“Remember the flourishing of feminist bookstores in the 90’s? Those are gone.”

“Transgenderism” is not a manifestation of capitalism. Transgenderism is a manifestation of extreme solipsistic emotionalism. It is express detachment from Reality. Arcological rationalization at its ultimate.

Insanity. Pure and simple. The primary reason we put up with it as a culture is our inability to call it insanity, out of fear that we are not treating its sufferers “equally”.

It’s another example of how American society is warped and distorted by the pernicious and incorrect doctrine of Human “equality”.

When I read it I thought of the extremes of gay male sexual culture because that is the most violent and brutal subculture I know (something) of. (Not saying it’s the most violent and brutal out there.)

I don’t actually think about this all the time, I promise! But the thread recently of blog posts about What Is Coming, etc., makes me think about it. So much is hidden, so much that is happening around us, whether because we cannot see it or because we don’t want to see it or because we can’t handle it. Will it all come to light? Is there a part of me that wants it to?

[NFR: Tell me more. What is hidden that we need to see? You can e-mail me privately if you want, and then I’ll post what of it I can, that you approve. rod — at — amconmag — dot — com. — RD]

Lord Karth said: ““Transgenderism” is not a manifestation of capitalism. Transgenderism is a manifestation of extreme solipsistic emotionalism. It is express detachment from Reality. Arcological rationalization at its ultimate.”

Except those things are precisely what capitalism encourages and desires. “Extreme solipsistic emotionalism” is what we get for 15 minutes of every hour on television as the commercials play. “Express detachment from reality” is what sells everything from McMansions to diet pills. “Arcological rationalization” is how the stock market works.

One of the reasons I keep coming back to your blog is posts like this. I find her overall journey/logic baffling, but it’s helpful to understand how someone could have such a completely foreign reaction to things.

Probably somewhat like she used to be, I supposed I’d be considered a “trans ally” while being skeptical of “peak trans”. What is so strange to me is that some trans activists going overboard would drive someone into the arms of Ben Shapiro (shudder).

Obviously, I don’t know anything about her beyond this letter, but she seems like someone who is looking for someone to provide Answers for her. (capital “A” intentional) When her previous tribe went too far for her in one area out of many, she rejected that worldview and adopted another tribe wholesale.

There is no reason for these weird connections at all. Are you pro-life? Congratulations, you are also against capital gains taxes! Support trans rights? You are also for cutting military spending!

Why not just think for yourself? Be for trans rights, but not a full “militant” trans agenda.

It’s more comfortable to throw in with a tribe as society gets more polarized, so there’s a clear human/primate drive for that group connection. However, it’s important to remember that comfortable is very different from “true”.

Having sold the disease, they are more than happy to sell the ‘cure’ and then sell years of therapy when that cure doesn’t have the desired results. And sell a million lawsuits against anyone who gets in the way. It’s capitalism untethered, and unrestrained.

I wonder how long it will take for all feminists to realize that transgenderism is a serious threat to their own ideology.

After all, doesn’t the transgender essentially assert that gender roles are innate, unchangeable, and a fundamental marker of one’s “true sex”? When they tell us that little boys playing with dolls are actually repressed girls, aren’t they relying on an incredibly rigid understanding of gender norms (that, frankly, go well beyond what even the most hardened social conservative would assert)?

Transgenderism is leading feminism like sheep to the slaughter by undermining every single one of its core tenets. It is equal parts hilarious, fascinating, and terrifying to watch reason implode on itself. For example, as Matt Walsh pointed out, how can feminists insist that only women can talk about abortion because “you have to have a uterus” to have an opinion on the matter when being born without any sort of female reproductive organs or DNA is not a stumbling block for being considered a woman? If Trump really wanted to watch liberal minds collapse in on themselves, he would declare himself the first woman president, throwing the final bit of salt into Hillary’s wounds. And who could challenge that claim? And under what logic? Logic itself is dead, and classical feminism will find that it cannot stand in this postmodern swamp either.

I’ve always thought the biggest flaw of transgenderism (and one that progressives can never reconcile) is that to say “So-and-so has an X mind trapped in a Y body” requires one to define what a male or female mind actually is. And if any type if mind can inhabit any type of body, why the pusg to set it right, and how do you know what the “right” match even is? When you think about it, there absolutely must be some objective definition of masculinity and feminity based on clearly different gender roles and preferences and tastes and behaviors. There must be an objective order to the male mind that is radically different than the natural order of the female mind.

Now, this poses a real challenge to postmodernist progs who insist on the destruction of definitions and order and objective standards. They’ll never be able to square this circle.
But consider especially what this does to the ideology of feminism. It basically eradicates every gain they’ve taken in the past half century.

In a truly funny irony, trans activists are acknowledging a very traditionalist understanding of gender roles. Just to take this line of thought one step further: Iran performs the second most sex change surgeries in the world. The last President of Iran also claimed there were no homosexuals in his country. Their definition of an ordered male mind is one that prefers to have sex with females. The “LGB” runs right into the “T”, just as feminism does. The “T” in the social justice warriors’ alphabet soup acronyms seems to be the logic-breaker that mucks everything else up.

I only wonder if radical progs will be forced to cut the transgender movement loose before it starts fouling up everything else they stand for?

Regarding the Steve Sailer observation, I hadn’t heard that before but its not really that surprising. Most “late in life men” are (or have been) married to a woman, had children and many of those work in traditionally “male” professions.

I don’t know of any quantitative studies of the demographics of late in life transitions, but it would be surprising if “many” of them didn’t come from the largest demographic segments of older men.

It’s interesting to me that this reader was pushed into Catholic Christianity by all this, from paganism. I would like to know more about this (and reader, if you’d like to explain it, of course I will protect your identity). Could it be that she realized that within paganism (and liberal Christianity, and within American liberal culture more generally), there are insufficient resources to push back against the trans insanity? That’s just my guess, but it makes sense to me. If you have built a spirituality and a cultural politics around the absolute sovereignty of the Self, then how do you say no, we will not cross this line? What, exactly, is there to keep you from stepping off into the abyss?

(I invite my pagan friend Franklin Evans to weigh in on this question from his pagan perspective!)

Rod, thank you for the invitation. I also eagerly hope your correspondent comments on this as well. I must ask the readers to keep in mind the following caveat: our general community — the blanket label of Pagans, Heathens and Polytheists — lacks any institutional structure worthy of that description, and our leadership, such as it is (and we love and respect them intensely) does not carry any direct authority over us. We see them as trusted teachers of seekers, as mentors, as fonts of information (and the occasional wisdom).

I’m also not going to qualify my assertions much. Implications of pomposity are stipulated freely. 😀

Modern Pagans have a good claim to being the original inclusivists. We, as a group, are defined by our eclecticism. Some will claim that we are the source of the polyamory movement (very big nod to The Church of All Worlds), we were long since a haven for homosexuals and other gender-based alternatives (meaning we predate the advent of the acronym LGBT).

We are, stipulating the exceptions in the New Age realm, antipathetic to the notion of Political Correctness, some (like me) even militantly so. Our foundational tenets name personal integrity, personal honesty, and a stepping-forward facing of reality.

I regret the need for that long build-up. I hope to avoid misunderstandings.

So, first: the term “absolute sovereignty of the Self” is rather an oxymoron. Such a concept cannot exist on its own. The point of personal integrity is we are connected with our world, every person, every animal, the earth and all its processes (air, water, etc.). I sit right now under the east coast storm, and it cares naught for my sense of sovereignty. That may seem like a trivial or superficial example. I assure all that it is completely serious.

My integrity includes celebrating the integrity of my fellow humans. If a trans person looks me in the eye (that’s a metaphor, folks!) and tells me that her XY chromosomes do not define her identity, then I see before me a woman.

There’s a strong dose of xenophobia around transgendered people. I don’t use that term lightly. People fear what they don’t understand. The dismissive (at best) snark aimed at it lumps every trans person with integrity in with all of the fads and fetishes (and some of those have their own integrity, separate from the transgender concept). It fails in a basic offering of compassion, in that it makes an assumption of judgment, based on religious beliefs, an incomplete understanding of biology and psychology, or just plain “ick” factor.

I come back to a concept I try to promote as much as possible: There is a false belief that understanding must necessarily lead to agreement. I’d increase the font and give it flashing neon colors, if I could. I’m reminded of it every time I engage in interfaith dialogue. I mourn it every time I encounter for the first time a member of an Abrahamic tradition (yes, mostly Christians, because as a life-long U.S. citizen and resident I’m quite surrounded by them) who starts with distrust of me and moves very often to hostility rather soon after. All I can ask is that the KJV Bible’s “do not suffer a witch to live” completely changes the original Greek word which in its contemporary context (like the decision to use “witch”) referred to a maker of potions, a person who seeks to poison others.

I humbly suggest that applying that concept to trans people would be a very good start.

If you have built a spirituality and a cultural politics around the absolute sovereignty of the Self, then how do you say no, we will not cross this line? What, exactly, is there to keep you from stepping off into the abyss?

I also look forward to a response from Franklin Evans; he always has something worthwhile to say. But…I can’t let this go. The two great lies that Christians tell about Pagans are: (1) that because we do not believe nor worship as they do, that we therefore are nihilists, and (2) that we hold as a pinnacle virtue some version of (as you phrased it above) “absolute sovereignty of the Self”. No.

It is more accurate to speak of “paganisms”; there are many varieties and practices, and in the interest of brevity I’ll leave it to everyone’s Google-fu to discover just how much. But in no version would it be accurate to say that humanity, let alone any one individual, occupies the sovereign position.

Some broad characteristics of Pagan belief include: the divine is immanent, not transcendent; we are participants in “the Great Conversation”—the interconnected web of existence; the cosmos is a dynamic system in a state of constant change and complex interrelationships. Pagan religion is experiential and participatory. “As above, so below” (as the Wiccans put it, although I am not Wiccan)—as Nature (the larger observable framework) maintains balance, equilibrium, moderation, harmony as key practices, so do we. We tend towards non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical not due to postmodernism but rather our observations of how nature works, and best practices for balance. We value diversity and complexity not due to modernity but rather the gifts (resilience, creativity, adaptability) they bring. We value communication in all its forms; it is the interplay of consciousness, energy, and form. We honor the circles/cycles of life. We honor our ancestors; they form the basis of our being.

Now, how does any of the above translate into a Pagan attitude towards the transgendered? Simply that a small minority in every world culture have been such, since human beings first evolved. Indigenous peoples had it right: that there are such persons as “two-spirited” (among other names), and they also have a place amongst the rest of us as themselves; they are a part of the whole and though their nature may differ from the common, it is no less and no more—their way of being serves a purpose, just as ours does.

Of course, Pagans have egalitarian views on gender, and richer, more varied archetypes of women and the feminine divine than patriarchal religions. That in and of itself interdicts a lot of gender-based acrimony.

Bingo. This is the same process played out in a larger way that I described with my own wife.

Rod, I do think that once people come to this realization – that the “liberation” rhetoric is BS and it’s about power not compassion – many can and do go hard right but I’d suggest that’s because in looking for an alternative to this poison. Notice where the poison is so often directed – at tradition and traditionalism. If people whose definition of freedom involves me agreeing under threat of doxxing or threats to my children that men have uteruses, first of all they can eff off, and second, if the traditionalism they so loathe is the polar opposite of what they seek, and that traditionalism- faith, family, frugality – in fact sustained civil society for many years, maybe its worth thinking about that. Maybe it’s worth examining the constraints against which the “activists” struggle to see what they’re actually destroying when they try to rend them asunder. And if in fact you see beauty or truth there – it’s worth trying to save

Further to my point above about homosexuals and sex changes in Iran: closer to home, a top child psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, was unceremoniously fired for having the audacity to recommend caution when dealing with young, gender-confused children.

His claim is that too many kids are being forced into radical sex changes when, in fact, many will grow out of the desire – with many coming to realize they are gay. So, to be clear, homosexuals are being strongly pressured into hormone therapies and genital surgeries from a young age by parents desperate for approval and zealous activists. This is that awkward moment where mental health clinics in urban North America begin to resemble those in Iran – when western progressivism begins to take the same shape as hardcore Islam.

Nothing new to see here. Just the west in twilight. Up is down, black is white, and such distinctions hold no value anyway. Into this vacuum of Truth steps all manner of debauchery, confusion, and incoherence. Pray for the souls of those who fall prey to our new postmodern tyrants. And prepare to embrace a wave of spiritual refugees.

If you don’t want to be around censorious trans people, don’t be around censorious trans people. That’s my strategy. And, remarkably, I can reconcile it with still being respectful toward the many trans people I know who are not that way. (I.e. those who are not college students.) It’s easy peasy, and it doesn’t require cultivating a schema of fear and hate around a philosophically diverse group of citizens who wish you and yours no harm. Try it!

Gay and lesbian folk strongly tend to be gender essentialists; the T caboose on the LG train has never fitted well onto the same gauge track as a result. There’s a reason many lesbians would likely be derided as TERFs by trans activists, and as best I can tell from listening around many older gay and lesbian folk are concerned there’s a lot of homophobia lurking beneath the current wave of transmania.

Ayn Rand was the only one who ever had the guts to create a religion around selfishness and make it public, but the ability of selfish people to put their desires above all else has never been stopped by any particular religion, whether Jewish, Christian, Pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever. Said individuals just stick “God told me that…” in front of their desires and go on their merry way.

I suspect the whole transsexual movement will burn out at some point, akin to the Satanic ritual panic, and we’ll be left with the individuals who actually DO have physical differences while the rest go charging off looking for another type of salvation. Some people just seem mentally geared to be looking for X as the reason why Everything Is Going Wrong In My Life and when X doesn’t solve the problem, they’ll just jump to another goal to go chasing after. It’s always a problem outside them and it’s always Someone Else’s Fault.

The older I get the more I come to the conclusion that the most destructive habit, bar none, is self-pity.

If you can say stuff like “I think transgenderism is a symptom of capitalism unbound,” you’re either an ideological conservative or a nerdy kid who recently discovered the rightwing blogosphere. Either way, you’re far removed from the practical world of politics where decisions are made that determine how and when real people’s lives stand and fall. Until your spouse joins the armed forces or your kid is born with a lifetime of healthcare needs or life otherwise connects you more directly to what Democrats and Republicans actually do when elected to public office, what you call your political orientation bears about as much relationship to politics as string theory to, well, string.

“Trans people have faced (at best) nothing but dismissive hostility all of their lives.”

So you declare. The two I knew in my life had nothing but support and understanding from all their friends and encountered no hostility to their issues (maybe some confusion). They were supported and loved before, during and after transition by everyone I knew – and were spoken of fondly and lovingly at their funerals.

I happen to live in West Virgina. AKA West ByGod Virginia. I think we have the distinction of being the state most supportive of Donald Trump. I’m a democrat and guess what? I am a very, very, very quiet one. I do not post about politics online nor do I speak up at social events. The bullies here are the conservatives. It’s the same everywhere – those in power are the bullies and those who are not in agreement with them keep their head down or their mind in the closet.

Is the whining on these blog posts about not being able to be authentic 100% of the time the same thing as the whining of leftist snowflakes? It sure sounds the same to me!

“a left-wing feminist who believes (correctly, I think) that transgenderism is a manifestation of capitalism unbound.”

See the first essay in the new Del Noce book on this. The cultural “Marcusean” left has entered “into an alliance with pre-existing forces in the system it fights against, possibly claiming the role of avant-garde and stimulus, but actually serving as a tool.” (page 17)

To put this another way, the globalist elites have harnessed the energies of the Sexual Revolution to serve their own ends, and the SJW types are simply blind to it. In a way it’s “sex sells” on stilts, with the progressives serving as the pitchmen while the globalists reap the benefits.

The fact that Del Noce called this in Europe 50 years ago is quite amazing, but in our own country Lasch was onto it too, of course, albeit a little later.

I would say that TA, Franklin Evans and La Lubu are closer to the truth than most. There are transgendered people out there and they have a right respect and accommodation.

I don’t think one has to subscribe to the militant transgendered advocacy to believe in that right and need for accommodation.

The problem with the advocacy, as I see it, rests with the concerns raised by Dr Kenneth Zucker. While it it is true that some people inevitably will be born transgendered, we can’t make that kind of determination of who is and who is not transgendered without a sustained conversation and study from those medical experts who are trained to diagnose and deal with the transgendered individuals.

I do believe that some are too quickly identifying their son or daughter as transgendered or, in the alternative, too quick in accepting their child’s self diagnosis as transgendered without first consulting with the prerequisite physician.

These parents and children may be misdiagnosing as transgendered one whobmight really be gay or lesbian.

Rushing to a diagnose does the child no favors, as that rush denies the child the time for self discovery and if the child in question is not really transgendered than the methods which are used to alleviate their suffering will only add to the list of problems. The patient so misdiagnosed would be exposed to all the risks of hormone replacement and corrective surgery without any of the benefits.

A cisgendered gay man or lesbian doesn’t need a newly molded body. He or she only needs the freedom to live his or her life as the gay man or woman that he or she is. He or she only needs the space and the freedom to find someone of the same sex to love.

And a cisgendered heterosexual but “feminine” acting man and the cisgendered but “masculine”behaving man doesn’t need a newly redesigned body. They only need the space and freedom to pursue their gender nonconforming pursuits.

The cautious approach which Dr Zucker seeks is not designed to deny those who are truly transgendered the treatment which they need not is it offered as as a means to morally bash those who might be transgendered.

It is, however, advised because a doctor who is concerned about his or her patients has to know what they have in order to properly treat them.

—Lesbian and feminist events are being shut down by transgender activists.—

Live by the sword…

Here’s a really wacky, goofy, off-the-wall idea: How about we teach women, early and often, to be submissive, modest, and soft-spoken to men. And, in turn, we teach men to put away their movies, video games, and pornography; and star showing some RESPECT, APPRECIATION, and SPECIAL PRIVILEGES for the weaker sex?

–Oh no, this is 2018. You can’t say things like that!–

You’re right, Rod. I can’t make TOO MUCH SENSE when I talk, now can I?

Somewhat off-topic, but you know how for some people Evangelical support for Trump was the final nail in the coffin in their belief in Evangelicalism or Christianity?

Well, don’t you think a similar phenomenon is happening in the opposite direction? With this woman it was the trans movement, and I certainly sympathise with that.

With me, it was watching liberals support Clinton. That led me to completely reject the liberal-progressive agenda – I had always been uncomfortable with aspects, but that was the last straw. Clinton was responsible for the destruction of Libya, resulting in the reintroduction of black slavery. She supported the Saudi-Wahhabi devastation of Syria, and was pushing for war with Russia, threatening nuclear holocaust, in support of those monsters. Once one supports Pol Pot (Clinton), one cannot occupy the moral highground on any issue.

For example, I have always been personally anti-abortion, but was not certain how that should be expressed legally. I now post pro-life articles on Facebook. Clinton’s pro-life position gave me courage.

I have also been given courage in my movement toward conservative Christianity by the knowledge that it is something of which Clinton-voters disapprove (of course, it would be disgusting if that were the only reason, but I cannot deny the psychological factors).

Everyone in the comments linking transgenderism to capitalism run amok are ridiculous (as though these feelings haven’t been around for centuries, waiting for medical technology to catch up). As are those giving an iron-clad ruling on the causes of gender dysphoria (“insanity”). What makes you all so certain in your bold proclamations? Fetal and child brain development is complicated, can you claim with certainty that there isn’t something physical going on? Such hubris.

After all, doesn’t the transgender essentially assert that gender roles are innate, unchangeable, and a fundamental marker of one’s “true sex”?

That kind of essentialist ontology is accepted by some, but there are many transgender individuals and activists who reject it.

Two well-known examples of activists who reject this formulation, both post-op, male-to-female transsexuals, are Kate Bornstein and Anne Lawrence. Ms. Bornstein is the author of 1994 book “Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us.” She includes herself as one of “the rest of us.” Anne Lawrence is a physician and psychologist and on the advisory board of WPATH. Her 2014 opus is entitled “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephylic Transsexualism.”

All I can ask is that the KJV Bible’s “do not suffer a witch to live” completely changes the original Greek word which in its contemporary context (like the decision to use “witch”) referred to a maker of potions, a person who seeks to poison others.

I humbly suggest that applying that concept to trans people would be a very good start.

Well, the Septuagint translation uses the word “pharmakous” (φαρμακοὺς οὐ περιποιήσετε) to translate the original Hebrew word “mekassepa”, which as we see from its use in Deuteronomy 18:9-14 means someone who accesses supernatural powers or something similar by whatever means:

“10 There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices sorcery, or an enchanter, or a mĕkaššēp, 11 or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12 For whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh. …”

I was as far left as you can get without being a full-on Marxist. I thought prostitution was empowering, polyamory was fine, witchcraft was a positive spirituality, and that men who identify as transgender were my sisters. I voted Greens and Democrats all the way.

OK, now try being a full-on Marxist. You can forget about prostitution being empowering (its exploitation of women), cast witchcraft aside (its an issue of non-class origin), and reclassify trans-sexuality as a medical diagnosis, not a political issue. I don’t expect hoary headlines about “the woman question” to be back in vogue, but anything along that line, you can be sure a Marxist it talking about the female sex, not men in beards wearing lipstick. Which reminds me of a Sarah Palin line. You know the difference between a clean-shaven man and a bearded lady? Lipstick! (Something like that).

If you vote for Greens and Democrats, you’re not left. In fact, if you vote for Greens, Nia Harris will call you a racist.

Trans people have faced (at best) nothing but dismissive hostility all of their lives.

I could kinda sorta buy that with gays. Trans hasn’t been an issue long enough for that statement to hold water. Nobody bothered to say “That’s so trans” because nobody imagined such a thing existed until a few years ago.

There’s a strong dose of xenophobia around transgendered people. I don’t use that term lightly. People fear what they don’t understand. The dismissive (at best) snark aimed at it lumps every trans person with integrity in with all of the fads and fetishes

As far as public profile and discourse goes, I think the fads and fetishes came first. And they are pretty awful. Take away the fads and fetishes, and the trans people can have their private space to work out their medical diagnosis with the physician of their choice. But male bodies won’t be running in the women’s track team (which is separate from the men’s team because women are on average shorter) or changing clothes in the women’s locker room — which is what really occasioned nearly all the dismissive commentary.

“Transgenderism” is not a manifestation of capitalism. Transgenderism is a manifestation of extreme solipsistic emotionalism.

Which capitalism is happy to package and sell, advertise, and arrange convenient legal frameworks to increase sales. Its not much different from the capitalists selling us the rope to hang them with.

Any chance you would consider changing the photo that goes with this post? Every time I went back to your blog today to read this, I had to quickly scroll past this pic so my boys wouldn’t see it. I know I’m being a prudish old lady, but I am what I am.

In my years at day care, one of the books they made available was something called “William’s Doll” which advanced the notion that there are lots of little boys who really want to play with dolls. Part of the whole 70s androgyny thing. But in retrospect the message was awfully benign. “Some boys want to do non-traditional-boy stuff, and that’s OK!” These days, everyone would assume William is trans.

Franklin, as usual, is the voice of reason. It is perfectly to be expected that the trans have chosen militancy. The problem is that they have been permitted to get away with it. It does not matter whom is speaking nor how reasoned or just their argument may be. If the door remains slammed in their faces, it does not matter how well the case is made.

Just because there is a grievance implies no obligation for it be responded to.

Biology has a way of making sense when lots of other things don’t. Everyone has 37 trillion cells that all have the same glaring truth about their sex. Most people sooner or later find it’s a little futile to argue against that, even while using a few billion of those same cells to do it. Now convincing an HR department or the federal government of that is something else, those entities are religious in nature and very zealous.

I thought the flourishing of feminist bookstores took place in the 70’s, and that they started closing down in the 90’s. Gay, and even left-wing, bookstores did enjoy a brief flourishing in the late 80’s and 90’s before Amazon absolutely CRUSHED them.

In 10-20 years, there will be a massive explosion in lawsuits against doctors, counsellors, teachers, parents who participated in these mutilating surgeries and hormonal treatments on kids not old enough to consent to such things (and on adults who can make a case that they were not of sound mind.)

Given the permanence of the effects over a full lifetime, damages alone will be massive — without even getting into pain and suffering and punitive damages.

I can’t imagine how a successful defense could be mounted, even with juries shaped by these orthodoxies. There are no peer-reviewed medical data or longitudinal trials to support implementing these approaches on the scale we are seeing. If this were a proposed cancer treatment, it wouldn’t be able to make it out of the earliest experimental trials.

And if you don’t think such a wave of successful lawsuits can happen, you don’t understand the power of unbridled capitalism.